The Making of the First World War

by Ian F W Beckett

  Reporting in June 1915, the De Bunsen committee recommended establishing post-war zones of influence over five autonomous provinces to be carved from the Ottoman Empire. As already decided, Russia would get the Straits and zones of influence over Anatolia and Armenia, while French interest in Syria would be recognised. Britain would exercise its influence over Mesopotamia, but also control Haifa on the Mediterranean coast of Palestine as a terminal for the Baghdad Railway that the Germans had been constructing and which the British would now also control.

  There was another consideration, however, beyond the Suez Canal and oil, for the Sultan in Constantinople also claimed the Caliphate, aspiring to supreme global authority over Sunni Islam, whose adherents formed the largest proportion of Muslims. About 80 per cent of the population of the Ottoman Empire were Muslim, but by far the greatest number of the world's Muslims – over 100 million – lived under British control, followed by the next largest concentration of about 19 million Muslims within the Tsarist Empire. When the ‘Young Turks’ of the CUP forced constitutional change on Sultan Abdülhamid II in 1908, the Hashemite Sherif (Sharif) of Mecca, Ali Abdullah Pasha, claimed the Caliphate on the grounds that he was in direct descent from Mohammed's own tribe, whereas the Ottomans were effectively usurpers to the title. The office of Sherif had evolved over time into that of governor of the western part of the Arabian Peninsula known as the Hejaz, and custodian of Islam's holiest shrines at Mecca and Medina. Ali Abdullah died that same year, being succeeded as Sherif and Emir of Mecca by his son, Hussein (Husayn), then aged about sixty.

  Real Ottoman control of the Hejaz was limited but Hussein's authority was contested, in turn, by the independent Emir of Nejd in central Arabia, Abdul Aziz Ibn Sa'ud, an adherent of the fundamentalist Wahhabi variant of Sunni Islam. Secularist as they were, the Young Turks were quite prepared to manipulate Islam and, as Caliph, Sultan Mehmed V duly proclaimed selective jihad against Britain, France and Russia on 11 November 1914: the precise date is disputed. Both the CUP and the Germans intended thereby to undermine their enemies’ empires, France also controlling Muslim populations in North and West Africa. Potentially, therefore, this posed a serious threat and there was Muslim unrest in India, Central Asia and Africa. Even before the war, Britain's Agent and Consul General in Egypt, none other than Kitchener, had conceived of Britain nominating and controlling its own Caliph. To Kitchener the obvious candidate was Hussein. By contrast, the government of India, wary of inflaming Muslim opinion in India by supplanting the Sultan as Caliph, saw Ibn Sa'ud as a better potential leader of revolt against the Turks. As a Wahhabi, he had no interest in claiming a Caliphate he believed had been long extinct.

  Kitchener and his advisers had met Hussein's second and favourite son, the cultivated but politically ambitious Abdullah, in Cairo in February 1914. Abdullah was anxious to ascertain whether the British would support his father should the Turks move to depose him. Whether any specific promises were made is unclear. Following prompting from Gilbert Clayton, who officially represented the Governor General of the Sudan, Sir Reginald Wingate, in Cairo, Kitchener, now Secretary of State for War, directed Ronald Storrs, the Oriental Secretary of the Agency in Cairo, to contact Abdullah on 24 September 1914. He was to enquire whether Hussein would support the British. When Abdullah's response seemed encouraging, Kitchener indicated to Storrs that Britain would support the Arabs if they took up arms against the Turks, would restore the Caliphate to Arabia, and would ‘guarantee that no internal intervention takes place in Arabia’.2 Encouraged by Clayton, Storrs and the Acting Agent and Consul General, Sir Milne Cheetham, embroidered this in translation into support for the ‘independence, rights and privileges of the Sherifate against all external foreign aggression’.3 It would appear that what Clayton, Storrs and Cheetham meant by independence was only from the Turks, and only for what could be characterised as the Hejaz.

  That Kitchener's former officials could run a policy separate from that of the Foreign Office owed much to the cloak of Kitchener's massive authority within the Cabinet. Storrs, who had studied oriental languages and literature at Cambridge, had joined Kitchener's staff in 1909 after serving in the Egyptian civil service. His knowledge of Arabic, however, was imprecise. Storrs struck most contemporaries as a cosmopolitan figure with a broad interest in music, literature and the fine arts, but also as vain and arrogant. A former soldier under Kitchener, the more tactful Clayton had been Wingate's private secretary before acting simultaneously as Wingate's representative in Cairo and the Anglo-Egyptian army's director of intelligence. In October 1914 he was appointed to head all the intelligence agencies in Cairo. While Clayton was undoubtedly shrewd, he tended to make judgements largely on intuition. Storrs also invariably believed what he wished to believe. Thus, Abdullah misled them into believing that there was general support in Arabia for Hussein. But they also saw the Caliphate in purely spiritual terms and did not grasp that Hussein would see the offer of the Caliphate as an offer of an extensive kingdom over Arabia, for the Caliph was both a temporal and spiritual ruler in Islam. An Arab kingdom was precisely what Hussein then demanded through the auspices of Abdullah in July 1915.

  The Germans were also courting Hussein. Hussein's third son, Faisal (Faysal), had met the German agent, Max Oppenheimer, in April 1915, as well as Enver Pasha. Recognising the preponderance of Shia Muslims in Persia and southern Mesopotamia, the Germans had also approached Shia clerics. Hussein stood to gain most by playing both sides off against each other, but he feared that the Turks were ready to depose him. Moreover, the Entente's blockade of exports such as Lebanese silk and Palestinian citrus fruit, coupled with bad harvests, led to considerable privation throughout Arabia. Income at Islam's holy places was also cut by the effect of the blockade on the Haj pilgrimages. Hussein was increasingly dependent upon the British readiness to supply grain to compensate for Turkish seizures of crops, and shipping to revive the Haj. Hussein also disliked the CUP's secularism that had led to the attempt to grant women equal rights, and to impose secular schools on Mecca and Medina.

  In October 1915 the British Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, authorised the new Agent and Consul General, the plodding Sir Henry McMahon, to open formal negotiations with Hussein. McMahon had experience only of India and spoke no Arabic. He was dependent, therefore, on Storrs's less than perfect Arabic, and that of Storrs's Consular Oriental Assistant, Ruhi, a Persian, whom Storrs himself later described as ‘a better agent than scholar’ and T. E. Lawrence as ‘more like a mandrake than a man’.4 In the course of the correspondence that passed between Cairo and Mecca, on 24 October 1915 McMahon committed Britain to an independent Arab kingdom after the war, albeit hedged with nuanced language as to its extent and the degree of British supervision. It would be subject to the exclusion of the Syrian coast, and territories of those already in a treaty relationship with Britain (such as Ibn Sa'ud), and also to the acknowledgement of British interests in Mesopotamia, and any French regional interests. Much has been made of what McMahon supposedly offered, with varied interpretations laid upon what he meant by excluding from the Arab kingdom the ‘districts’ west of Damascus, Hama, Homs and Aleppo. ‘District’ was translated by Storrs or Ruhi as wiläyät, which they interpreted as akin to a Turkish administrative province, or vilayet but which Arabs could regard as meaning ‘environs’. Palestine, which was not specifically mentioned in the correspondence, lay south rather than west of a line drawn between the four towns, but to the British it lay west of the Turkish province of Damascus. How far Hussein accepted the British interpretation remains a matter of debate, but it is clear that the Arabs made a distinction between accepting Jewish settlement in Palestine and accepting a Jewish state. Faisal certainly accepted Jewish settlement in January 1919.

  Whatever the later arguments, McMahon was not guaranteeing anything at all. Jewish settlement in Palestine was not on his mind in 1915, though French claims to the coast were. He later suggested that there had been nowhere of importance south of Damascus w
orth mentioning and he was clear that Palestine was excluded from any potential Arab state. Clayton, Sykes, Grey and Lloyd George all concurred. No maps were attached to the correspondence, and McMahon chose not to clarify anything in subsequent correspondence with Hussein, who was prepared to wait for the post-war settlement. The exchanges with Hussein were prompted by the belief in Cairo that an Arab revolt against the Turks was imminent. There had been anti-Ottoman conspiracies by Arab secret societies before the war. Two of these societies, al-Fatat (The Society of the Young Arab Nation) and al-'Ahd (The Covenant), had begun to cooperate in early 1915, following the first wave of executions of Arab activists by Cemal, who now commanded the Turkish Fourth Army based at Damascus. Unrest did not necessarily mean revolt. A complete hoaxer, Muhammed Sharif-al-Faruqi, a junior Arab officer who deserted from the Ottoman army in early 1915, took in Clayton. Al-Faruqi claimed to speak on behalf of the Arab societies, and suggested that they were prepared to back Hussein. Clayton was well aware of the executions in Damascus but chose to ignore them. It was also believed that al-Faruqi spoke for Hussein, though he had never met him. Hussein was now also ready to commit because he knew the Turks did intend to depose him.

  The French had agreed only reluctantly in April 1915 to conceding the Straits and Constantinople to Russia, and there was considerable public support in France for securing Syria. Grey was prepared to assuage French suspicions by authorising Sir Mark Sykes to negotiate with them over the frontiers of Syria, since fulfilling promises to Hussein required concessions to the French. Sykes has become best known in recent years for the exhumation of his body by virologists from its lead-lined coffin in 2008 in the hope of obtaining more information on the 1918–19 ‘Spanish’ influenza pandemic, from which Sykes died in February 1919. Tissue was extracted, but the coffin had split and there was more decomposition than anticipated. In 1915 Sykes, the energetic and extremely wealthy thirty-six-year-old baronet and Unionist MP for Kingston on Hull, was regarded as the leading expert on the Middle East. He had travelled extensively throughout the Ottoman Empire after failing to complete his degree at Cambridge. An ebullient figure with a creative mind, Sykes was a gifted mimic and cartoonist. His Catholicism was an additional recommendation to Grey in suggesting an ability to relate to the French. But Sykes, whom many Foreign Office officials saw as a pure amateur, was not without an agenda. He had joined Kitchener's staff at the War Office in early 1915 and had then personally represented Kitchener on the De Bunsen committee, and greatly influenced its conclusions. Sent on an extensive visit to the Middle East and India, Sykes had fallen in with the ideas of Clayton and Storrs for excluding the French from Syria. Sykes had also been struck by the lack of a centrally agreed policy and, as a result, recommended the establishment of what became known as the Arab Bureau in Cairo. The Bureau had less power than Sykes had envisaged, being merely a branch of Clayton's intelligence department, but it had the ear of Kitchener and of Sykes himself.

  The talks opened on 23 November 1915, the French delegation being headed by François Georges Picot. The former French Consul General in Beirut, Picot was dedicated to securing all of Syria (including Palestine) for France, albeit with direct control over only the coast. Hashemite rulers directly supervised by French advisers would rule the interior. The French, however, were in a relatively weak position in that Britain was taking on the main burden of the war against the Turks. Sykes was determined to separate Palestine from Syria. He was prepared to see the French control Lebanon and coastal Syria directly, with the French exercising indirect influence over inland Syria as a barrier between British territory and Russian control of Armenia and eastern Anatolia. Since the Italians had joined the Entente in May 1915, they would receive some influence over parts of Anatolia, as would the Greeks, whom the British hoped to bring into the war. With both Sykes and Picot wanting to acquire Palestine, the compromise was that it would be an international zone. Haifa and Acre would be under direct British control, together with a strip of territory from these ports along the railway line to Baghdad. Some within the Cabinet were hostile to any concessions to the French, but the draft was agreed on 31 January 1916 and signed by Britain, France and Russia on 15 May 1916.

  Sykes thought he had reconciled the claims of the French and Hussein, not realising that no one in London or Cairo took the idea of an Arab state seriously. Grey told the Secretary of State for India, Austen Chamberlain, that ‘the whole thing was a castle in the air which would never materialise’.5 At the time, however, the war's end seemed a long way off and attracting Arab support seemed sensible. The British war effort in the Middle East had faltered. Gallipoli was to be evacuated in January 1916. There had also been a serious setback in Mesopotamia, for the desire to ensure British prestige in Muslim eyes encouraged extension of the campaign from the occupation of Basra to an advance up the Tigris to Kut el-Amara in June 1915 without an adequate force. The advance to Kut became an advance on Baghdad in November 1915 but, within two days, the overextended expedition was forced to retreat back to Kut. Surrounded, it was compelled to surrender in April 1916.

  Any promises made to Hussein were dependent on the Arab Revolt taking place. Hussein duly declared his revolt on 5 June 1916. Far more charismatic than either his father, Hussein, or his elder brother, Abdullah, Faisal became the undisputed leader of the revolt in November 1916 following the withdrawal of ‘Aziz ‘Ali al-Misra of al-'Ahd. At peak, there were some 40,000 under arms, mostly tribesmen from the Hejaz, but it was by no means the case that all Arabs supported the revolt. Faisal had negotiated the so-called Damascus Protocol with representatives of the secret societies in April 1915, envisaging post-war independence for all of Arabia and Mesopotamia. This had then informed Hussein's demand for an Arab kingdom in his approach to the British in July 1915. Al-Misra, however, had purposely not taken Medina at the start of the revolt because he favoured a dual Turko-Arab federation modelled on Austria-Hungary. Nor did advocates of a greater Syria, Lebanese separatists, or Ibn Sa'ud share Hussein's concept of a unified Arab state. Such divisions did not assist the Arab cause in dealings with the Entente, especially as it appeared that the revolt was not yielding any positive results: little was achieved until the capture of Aqaba in July 1917. In such circumstances, supporting the Zionist cause looked more promising. Jews had already formed the Zion Mule Corps at Gallipoli, and would later raise three battalions of the Royal Fusiliers.

  The Germans had toyed with Zionism for some years, though this sat uneasily with the equal German support of Islam. The Zionist Executive and its Central Office were based in Berlin in August 1914, though it then moved its headquarters to Copenhagen. Most Jews had little liking for a Tsarist government responsible for innumerable pogroms in the past, and there was a general assumption in London that most Jews were pro-German. Certainly, German officials saw Zionism as just as useful an instrument as Islam for undermining the Entente. In June 1915 Arthur Zimmermann, the Under Secretary of State in the German Foreign Ministry, informed a leading rabbi in Magdeburg that the German government was urging the Turks to lift barriers to Jewish immigration into Palestine. Many German Jews believed that Germany was more likely to deliver on its promises as Turkey's ally. Under German pressure, however, Cemal was prepared at most to ease the oppression of Jews in Palestine. Initially, Zionists in Palestine had offered to raise forces for the Turks, but their leaders were deported, and gradually they recognised that Britain could offer more than the Turks. Some Zionists, however, feared the impact of support for Britain on Jewish communities in Germany and Austria-Hungary.

  Despite assumptions about Jewish support for Germany, there was some sympathy for Zionist aspirations in Britain. As long ago as the 1840s, Lord Palmerston had given some consideration to a Jewish presence in Palestine. As prime minister, Balfour and his Colonial Secretary, Joseph Chamberlain, had seriously contemplated offering a Jewish colony in the British East Africa Protectorate (Uganda) in 1903, and Lloyd George had tried to interest the Cabinet in establishing one
in Sinai in 1906. In January 1915 the first practising Jew to sit in the Cabinet, Sir Herbert Samuel, President of the Local Government Board, suggested to Prime Minister Asquith making Palestine a British protectorate, and encouraging Jewish emigration there. Grey was interested but only Lloyd George was disposed to support it, and it was rejected.

  What triggered a more definite British move to recognise Zionist aspirations was the belief that Germany might pre-empt any public declaration of support. At the same time, a British declaration of support for Zionism promised to curry favour both in the United States and in Russia once the Tsar had been overthrown. Weizmann certainly played on the idea that the Jews were a monolithic force throughout the world that could be so influenced. The Foreign Office had particular expectations of influencing Jewish Bolsheviks like Trotsky, but they were not Zionists. Indeed, the Bolsheviks promptly published the ‘secret treaties’ between the allies, including the Sykes-Picot agreement, in December 1917. Arguably, winning the support of American Jews was even more significant since Britain was now heavily dependent upon US financial support. Influencing American Jewish opinion might yield leverage to offset President Wilson's evident intention of winning the peace on his own terms. Another potential advantage of declaring support for Zionism was that French and Italian suspicions of British aims in Palestine could be allayed. To all Britain's allies, therefore, the coming operations in Palestine ‘could be presented as a campaign of liberation, and Britain's post-war presence could be cloaked as a necessary step towards self-determination’.6